In a television broadcasting station, digital video cassette recorders are used by reporters to gather news materials or the like. Then, records in the digital video cassette recorders are reviewed and edited for broadcasting.
The records are transferred to a server including a hard disk or the like having a high storage capacity. Once the data are stored in the server, they can be assessed by any computer connected to the server. It is desired in a television broadcasting station to broadcast the latest news. Therefore, it is required to transfer the records gathered in the recorder to the server as fast as possible.
Video data without compression can be transmitted between a digital video cassette recorder and a server. On the other hand, when compressed video data are transmitted, the data can be transferred if the data compression format of the digital video cassette recorder is the same as that of the main server. However, the compression format of video data such as DV format of a digital video cassette recorder is usually different from the compression format of a server having a format such as MPEG standard. Therefore, a format converter for converting data compression format is needed between the digital video cassette recorder and the server. However, if the transfer speed of the server is normal speed, the compressed digital video data can be transferred only at the normal speed from the digital video cassette recorder. Therefore, speed cannot be increased even if the recorder can reproduce the data at a faster speed. It is desirable to construct a system which can deal with video data at a fast speed even if various data compression formats are used therein.